A Global Meditation With Eckhart Tolle

Good evening and welcome to tonight's special global live meditation with Eckhart Tolle. It's so nice to be here with all of you in this beautiful collective field. I wanted to also share some upcoming opportunities to be with Eckhart in person. Eckhart's going to be beginning his US tour and he'll be starting off in Denver and then also be in Austin and Miami and Los Angeles and Seattle. And you can find out more about these events@eckharttole.com and if you've joined us on YouTube, you'll see that our team has pinned the link to eckhart tolle.com and the event page so you could learn more about these events there. And if you've joined us on the player page, you'll see to your right there's a button that says learn more with these events. And so if you live in any of these cities, we'd love to have you in person and joining us for Eckhart's events. And with that, it's my pleasure this evening to welcome Eckhart Tolle. Eckhart, welcome.

Thank you, Sibyl. Thank you very much. Let me just adjust something on my screen here. Right. Welcome to our global meditation, which is live here and now. I'm using life in the conventional sense. Ultimately, there's nothing that is not life. And even if you're watching this meditation 20 years from now, who knows, it may still be up on YouTube. It'll be live and it'll be the present moment. I may be gone completely from this dimension. Who knows, most likely if it's 20 years, but it'll be life. Because there's only the now. That's something you can perhaps agree with or disagree with. Conceptually. One could dispute it simply by saying, what do you mean there's only now? I had breakfast this morning that it's not now. That was this morning. But of course, when you had the breakfast, it was the now. And now that you're thinking about it, it's still the now. There's only the now. It can be an intellectual acknowledgment, or it can be a more experiential, deeper realization of the power that is, one could say, concealed, hidden in the present moment. A silent power. Now is only one term we could use. In ancient times, it's been referred to in various traditions as the dao in ancient China, the logos in ancient Greek philosophy, and many other terms, all pointing to one reality, a reality that underlies this physics, our so called physical reality. That is Deeper. It transcends space and time, is inherent in every life form, is the essence of every life form. Which means it is the essence of you, your essence. We could also call it consciousness, not consciousness of something, not consciousness that has become. It has incarnated into some form. Because that's what consciousness does. It incarnates into forms. And then the. On the surface reality that we inhabit inhabit here as physical entities. We see the disguises of countless disguises of consciousness appearing as a multitude of life forms. And yet there's only one reality hiding behind it all. Do you call it God? I would call it the emanation of God, the divine presence. God is totally transcendent. Not God is not an entity that you can find in space or time. But from the transcendent dimension. The on this unknowable being itself you could say emanates. There's an outflow from the transcendent dimension into this dimension. This outflow is like the sun sending out light continuously. And then suddenly there's you temporarily. And the essence of you is that which animates you. The light of consciousness. It animates the physical form. It's the invisible presence. A vast intelligence set lives in and through you as you. It holds the items and molecules together. There's an intelligence there that organizes on this level the atoms and. Atoms and molecules of the physical you. Incredibly complex. Nobody. Even now we understand only a fraction of how the physical body, how it all works every moment. Countless highly complex functions. Chemical laboratories, unbelievable. The process is. Are you doing that your. Your mind? No, you couldn't. Nobody could. Something is doing it. And that is one aspect of that vast intelligence that underlies of so called reality. Meditation is the realization of that dimension within yourself. As such, it is not a separate activity that you do occasionally. Although if you want to do a technique, that's fine, it can be helpful. But meditation is something deeper, more immediate and more everlasting and permanent. Here now, this realization within yourself of that underneath your audio thinking, underneath the flow of emotions which numerate those, usually those two things make up the personality. It's a dreamlike state. Consciousness is dreaming the dream of you, so to speak. And underneath it all, there is that which is doing the dreaming. In this dimension. It can wake up so suddenly or gradually. For example, here now you realize you are not just your thoughts and feelings or emotions or the physical body. That's normally what looks constitutes you. When people think of themselves, they refer to their physical body. And then there's a psychological entity stream of thinking and then the emotions that accompany the stream of thinking. Those three make up the person. But there are only forms that consciousness has incarnated into briefly in this play of forms and that most humans overlook. The most important aspect of who or what they are. Beyond the body, beyond the thinking mind, beyond the flux of emotions, underneath all that, there is a presence. And you can only sense it when for a moment, the. Your thinking subsides. For example, now, because there's nothing to think about, there's nothing to work out. You just listen to the words. And perhaps something in you recognizes the truth to which these words point beyond thought. A direct, immediate realization that there is something deeper, more, infinitely more essential in you than the physical body. Thoughts and emotions, or they're not separate, they're kind of the surface of you. Beyond the surface, there is what I sometimes call your essence identity. The mind becomes still. Do you notice the moment you notice that there is a stillness in you? For example, this is an opportunity here. Now I'm kind of. This is a kind of transmission not only through words, but also through certain emanation. And you might say, what do you mean emanation? There's just a screen there. Consciousness is not dependent on space and time. So there isn't. There can be an emanation, nothing to do with the fact that you are somewhere else on the planet. So you realize, if only briefly, that there is a stillness in you. This is easy to overlook because the mind says so what? It says, I've got other problems to think about. My life is full of them. What stillness going to do for me? How is that going to improve my life? Says the mind, the thinking mind, the ego. And of course that's precisely denies the power of that. But that is precisely what liberates you from the world of problems. Not that challenges do not continue to happen around you, but it liberates you from the unhappiness, the frustration, the. The fear, the anger that otherwise are part of your normal existence. When you're not in touch with that essence identity, you cannot feel that. You cannot sense that feel. Feel may not be the right way to sense that within. Language is inadequate because language is designed to deal with the things, hear the physical things. This, this. Are you still breathing? How do you know that you're breathing? Well, I can feel it. I can feel the air moving in and out of my body. My attention is there. Now the air is moving in and out. What does that do? It can become a portal into stillness. It can become a portal into realization of your Essence, identity, because awareness of your breathing, it takes attention away from thinking, but you're not falling asleep. We don't want to go that way. One way of not thinking is going to sleep. Well, even in sleep, you're still dreaming. So it's a kind of still mind activity. And then at some point in sleep, you reach dreamless sleep for certain periods of time, and then you emerge out of that. And what this is all about here, it's a little bit like entering the realm of dreamless sleep, where you reconnect with source unconsciously, you reconnect with the source of life in dreamless sleep. Because without dreamless sleep, you would go insane. You could not survive for long. In dreamless sleep, you reconnect with the source, but you don't know. Just happens to you. Animals do the same. They dream and then they go briefly into dreams. They reconnect with Source and then they merge out of that again. So you die every night. Then you come back as a person. But this reconnection with source helps you in a limited way. It keeps you going as a person, but it does not liberate you from being imprisoned in this personal selfhood, self, sense of self. But what. In true meditation, one could say that you go into what otherwise is dreamless sleep. You go into it fully awake, not, not at night, here and now. You go to that same place that you go to without knowing it, knowingly, consciously. It's the realization of a nice word, the realization of being. Mind subsides for a moment, thinking what is left. The realization that you are. I am. A silent presence is there even when you're not thinking. In fact, you can only know it when you're not thinking, but you're not falling asleep. There's a sign here. Now there is a silent presence within you that is you in a much deeper sense than the personality. And this silent presence, that is the stillness has nothing to do with your age, your status in life, your physical body, your race, your gender. It's beyond all that. And it liberates you from identification with all those things. Identification with all those things is ultimately the prison. These things exist. They can be acknowledged. Yes, that's fine. You acknowledge your gender, you acknowledge your race, you acknowledge your age, your status in life, but not that it's not who you are. It's a temporary thing. So that's. You need liberation from that. Not seeking yourself in it, looking for yourself in it, and then believing that you found yourself because you have identified completely with your race, your gender, your achievements, or Your failures, what other people think of you, what do you think of yourself? All those things, they are fine, they have a place in this limited reality. But identification with that, that's the. That is the delusion and that's your present because you are beyond that. And it's not an abstract thing. It's a very immediate realization. There's nothing to believe in, but something to sense here now, within yourself as a silent resins. And once you've tasted that, you know that that is something real, not some abstract belief system. And you can go there more often. Redirect attention away from where it usually is captured, usually conscious. Your conscious attention is captured by sense perceptions, including these things you call it captures your. Your. So it's always done that in the world already. Ancient traditions have spoken of this, that your attention is constantly out there. And now there's an added dimension to it which is here terrible. And then your attention is captured by all your thinking. Even when there's nothing happening. There's nothing but it's still happening in your head, even in the middle of the night. And then the emotions. And so it's a. You reclaim consciousness from thinking to some extent also from sense perceptions. They become. Sense perception can be a very good starting point to become conscious of sense perceptions. Rather than thinking about them, interpreting them, naming them, just become conscious of sense perception. Like visual. Here I can look at the trees, sky, it's fine. And then I'm not think, not, I don't. This is a kind of preliminary practice, so to speak. To be. To become, to perceive without naming. Just be the awareness for the perception. And you said everything is. Actually becomes more alive. I have a plant over there and it's alive. I can sense that the plant too has an animating presence within it that is not accessible to sense perceptions, but begins with giving it, acknowledging the. The sense perception of it. Without naming. Because naming creates the barrier. Sometimes naming is necessary. We're not talking about that. When you go to a shop and you want to buy a plant, you can't say I want this nameless plant. In some situations you have to name, but not. Not be obsessed with naming. Being able to liberate yourself from the otherwise obsessive naming of things, interpreting things. And there you have it. It's. It's pure presence. And that's the beginning of going beyond sense perceptions. It can often start with the acknowledgment of sense perceptions. And then you notice there's not only the sense perception, there's also the consciousness behind the sense Perception. And you can sense that as the silent presence that is doing the perceiving. When you're naming, you're the person that is perceiving. When you're not naming but staying conscious, you become the silent presence that is perceiving the essential you. I could also say the universe is then perceiving through you. You are the silent presence that is perceiving this world. And then gradually you more and more you connect with that. And the silent presence is not necessarily a passive perceiver. That's a wonderful thing. The silent presence can also act. You can become a servant, a tool of this silent presence. That is, there's an intelligence there that can then spontaneously do things in your life, say things, do things, come up with. Suddenly creative idea comes out of where did that come from? Or a sense of deep sense of aliveness and joy. Although nothing in particular is happening around you. Suddenly there's the joy of being alive, not the joy says I should be happy because there's so many people that are less well off than me. That's not it. That. That means you need other people to be less well off than you to. To make you feel good. That's the ego trying to do something. No, the joy is not. It's nothing comparative. There's a. I've known people in prison who have experienced this sudden joy. The joy of being. The joy of being I am. This is that silent presence. It is the essential I am without adding anything to it. That is the essential spiritual realization. All traditions point to that. Jesus said in the Gospel of John, before Abraham was I am. Was he referring to himself as a person? No, because obviously the person of Jesus wasn't alive when Abraham believed long before Jesus. So he wasn't referring to himself as a person. When he said before Abraham was I am, he was saying he was referring to his essence identity. The deeper where reconnects with the Source. The source which he named the Father. He had to give it a name according to the cultural tradition that he lived in. Because at that time, a father in a patriarchal society was the ultimate authority, the ultimate. So he had to. He had to call it something. It's the Father. Jesus said, I can of my own self do nothing. His own self is the person. I can of my own self do nothing. The deeper the being in me, the I am where I and the Father are one that is doing the works. So everything is so clear. And it's. Even if you want to look at the Bible in the Old Testament, when the prophet asks, climbs up the mountain. And on top of the mountain he meets God. Although he cannot look at God, he just, there's a presence of God. And he asks, what's your name? Imagine God asking God, what's your name? But God gives a very profound answer. He says, I am. I am the I am. And so the prophet goes, what? It's unlikely that he understood it, but maybe he did at some point. And then he asked God another question, said, when I come down from the mountain, what shall I tell my people? Who did I speak to? Who spoke to me? And God says, tell them that the I am spoke to you. Very profound. I don't know how many people in the churches understand the deeper meaning of that. Because you can only understand it experientially. Not intellectually. Should intellectually have some silly explanation. It becomes theology. But experientially it's, you realize the I am in within you. Sometimes it happens to people when everything goes wrong in their, in their life. They lose suddenly they lose everything. Their home, maybe their family gets even killed. Or they leave them a breakdown of structures that gave them security and so on. Or suddenly a life threatening illness, loss of all possessions, deaths of loved ones. Your home is gone. And then some people wake up in that situation because they can't identify with anything anymore. All that's left is the pure being, the realization of being. And that's a piece that passes all understanding. When you suddenly you find this inner, this deep peace, although you don't have anything anymore, that's the opportunity that the grace that lies concealed behind great loss. When you experience great loss behind that, there is the possibility of spiritual realization. But you don't have to wait for that. And here, now you may not need that anymore. Although every loss in one way or another will come to everybody eventually. The body is lost, obviously. And other bodies around you will be lost perhaps before your body goes. Meditation. Are we meditating right now? Not in a conventional sense. Whether or not you are meditating right now, what we call meditation in a wider or deeper sense depends on where you are listening from to the words. You're listening from the thinking mind or you're listening from the deeper level of your being. Then it's a meditation, if you even want to use that term. That's why you, I often say you cannot do a meditation. People who meditate sometimes think that they actually say I have to do my meditation. But they might even have a to do list. Lunch appointment, zoom call at 4 o' clock, 5 o' clock, I'm meeting this person, 6 or 7 o' clock meditation and even the even if it is even the unspoken idea that you're doing meditation could be a huge obstacle to real meditation. Doing implies that you need time in order to achieve something. But true meditation isn't doing at all. It's the relinquishment of doing, because doing operates in time. I'm doing doing this in order to. It's the relinquishment of doing and the realization of being, which is all, which is eternal. So the realization, if you think you do have to have to do something that prevents you from realizing the being of you, the I am, because you think you need to do something to get to the I am. But the I am is already your essence identity. Sometimes the I am I call the deep I another nice term signpost that the deep eye is always already there, but unrecognized in most people because their attention is captured by the surface eye, the body, the mind, emotions, the surface I. And there's a deep I am, the deep eye that can be known here now, because it's always there. And when you think you need to do something, that immediately brings in time and that this becomes the obstacle to the realization of being, which is beyond time, which is already the case, which is already the reality of you. So there's the twofold truth which looks perhaps at first contradictory on the level of the surface I, the person, which is your form, identity, the surface I. On that level, there are probably things for you to do. There are things that you can do and perhaps should do. Explore the world, have new experiences, acquire new skills, improve yourself physically, mentally, learn something, new language. There are many things that you can do, perhaps should do on the level of the person. Relationships, work on your relationships, but there you already come to. If you're not connected to the deeper, then all your relations will be very problematic. But anyway, as a person, there are things for you to do. Unless you're 95 years old, then perhaps there isn't that much to do anymore except be. But otherwise, yes, the things you need to do, you become a better or a stronger person, a more accomplished person. It's nice to achieve something. Most people would like that. But that's not all. On on that level. Yes, there's on that level also. Let's put that side for more. Yes, there is things for you to do on the level of the person. But there is another level to you, another dimension to you, where the you are already complete. There's no nothing you can, should or can Add to the reality of here, you as the deep. Ey. Nothing can be added to that. At that level, you're totally complete. Both exist. Both. There's the truth of the surface reality, as I call it, and there is a deeper truth of the deep eye. When you need. There's nothing that you need to do. You cannot improve yourself. You don't need to on that level. It's the timeless dimension of you. And so the mastery of life consists in managing your life in this dimension without losing yourself in it. And you don't lose yourself in it by staying connected with a deeper dimension where there's the deep. The deep I am of you. And the I am needs nothing. And when you can sense your inherent I amness, there is a. There is a subtle, silent joy in that that we can call that the joy of being. And that can arise anywhere, whether you're in a mansion or in a prison cell. You could realize the dimension of that mystery, the joy of being. At first, perhaps it's very subtle. Then you go deeper. It emanates. Or yes, you go deeper into that. You. The connection becomes stronger because on this level, there's time. So your connection to the timeless gradually becomes stronger. This looks a little paradoxical, but that's how it is, your connection. And then it frees you from taking anything to do with you as a person absolutely seriously. You have a certain detachment. Yes, you engage in things and. But there's a certain detachment from all the things of your life, the things that make up your life. And that is wonderful, wonderful liberation. When you're not dependent on this and that and that and the outcome of this and your plans and detached to every outcome and. And your. Your inner. Your inner state is then determined by every little thing that happens outside of you. Can change suddenly, can change your emotions and suddenly angry and reactive. The world situation makes you reactive and angry or desperate. Don't underestimate the importance of your state of consciousness. Yes, stretching is good. Stretch and feel the aliveness within the body. You don't take the world that seriously anymore. Don't underestimate the diff. The import. The. The importance of your state of consciousness and what you experience as reality. There is a connection. They're not completely separate. There isn't a reality there. Without your consciousness, would there be a world? That's a deep question. Without your consciousness and your sense perceptions and your sense perception depend on your consciousness. Would there be a room here? Would there be a table? A window, A picture? Well, what are. Let's say the Table and the picture and the window, they're all at picture and they're all in constant motion terms and molecules form floating around in constant motion. Just energy. In other words, just life energy, which is ultimately a certain vibrational frequency of consciousness. Is that a world? No. There's atoms and molecules floating around in constant motion. Then at some point when there's a. You come in and your consciousness comes in and then their consciousness creates your sense organs and it creates the mind. And when the consciousness flows through your mind and your sensory organs, suddenly the items and molecules that are floating around becomes something. Suddenly there's a table here or there's a picture, there's a window, there's a tree. Before there was just energy from. And suddenly there's a world. So there's a connection, a deep connection between your conscious and the world. That's why if you think you can do nothing to make the world a better place, your state of consciousness is extremely important and determines ultimately what becomes your reality. In other words, how you experience the world. In other words, the world. So world. If you're looking for greater sanity in the world because the world seems a little insane, if not perhaps more than a little, not totally insane, it's a strong element of insanity. And the true sanity begins with you. And don't underestimate the importance of your state of consciousness in this world. Because every you are connected to every other human at a deeper level. All human consciousness is one consciousness. And that collective human consciousness is just one aspect or one ray of the greater one consciousness that underlies our so called reality. So I can't remember who it said, who said it. Was it Nelson Mandela or somebody? Be the change that you want to see in this world. And to be the change there needs to be that change in your state of consciousness so that you're no longer dominated by the egoic state of consciousness. Another we I talked about the breath awareness. Another portal into an entry point into that deeper eye. And a portal into the deeper eye is body awareness. Not external body awareness. Not the body awareness you have when you look at yourself in the mirror. And then you tell yourself something about. You can say oh, I look great or I look terrible, I should be doing something or whatever. That's not body awareness I'm talking about not external body awareness, but inner body awareness. What is that? Inner body awareness is the awareness of the life that inhabits your body. That which animates the body in you, that holds all the atoms and molecules together until it doesn't anymore. It holds all the atoms and is the organized, highly, incredibly, unbelievably intelligent organizing principle behind the so called physical form. It is invisible. Obviously this, that which holds it together is an invisible presence. But you can become aware of that invisible presence as a simple simply sensing. You put your attention into the body where normally your attention is on sense perceptions and thinking and emotions. And then you redirect attention into the inner body. Sometimes you can start. The best starting points are, for example, in your hands. You hold your hands and you close your eyes and. And then you ask yourself, without moving my hands and without touching anything, how can I know that my hands are still there? Not through memory, not because your mind says, well, they are still there because a few seconds ago I saw them. No, how can I know right now in this moment that the hands are still there? You're not moving your hands and you're not touching anything. And by asking yourself that question, your consciousness will move into your hands and you begin to feel. There is an aliveness within your hands that before you didn't feel at all. You might begin to feel a tingling sensation in your fingers and a very subtle aliveness. Something is in your hands that is not visible. And once you can feel your hands, that's the beginning of inner body awareness. Then you can direct your attention to your feet. Are your feet still there? Can you feel them? Yes. There is a very subtle scent, a subtle feeling of the inside of your feet are tingling, throbbing, whatever it is. Then you move your attention into your legs or your legs and, and gradually you, the rest of the entire body. Suddenly you become aware of this. There's an aliveness in your body. Breath helps you also to take a few deep breaths and breathe into the abdomen. As soon as you feel that, it feels as if the air was moving into the abdomen now and there's an energy field here and you can feel the energy from there spreading out into the rest of the body. Your body is alive. You can couple it with your breathing practice and the two together. Because the, if you take a few deep breaths and you can feel the aliveness that pervades the body more strongly. Oh, this is wonderful. And you're completely, you're not thinking when you're doing that. You, you have inner body awareness and that is an, an entry point into the deeper eye, the stillness. That's a portal that goes into the stillness. It's a beautiful practice. I call it sometimes an anchor for presence. An anchor, like a ship has an anchor. You have an anchor that keeps you present and that A good, very good anchor is inner body awareness. And that inner body has nothing to do with your outer body. Whether your outer body is old or young, doesn't matter. Whether it's weak or strong, or beautiful or not beautiful or thin or not thin. All that has nothing to do with it. Inner body awareness is a beautiful portal into that dimension, into the deep eye. You can also hold inner body awareness even when your eyes are not closed. Although it's often good to start by closing your eyes. Then you open your eyes. For example, now as I'm speaking to you, and perhaps you as you're listening now, you can feel as I can, this energy field that pervades every cell of the body. The entire inner body is alive. And I can speak and feel it at the same time. I can look at the sky and feel it at the same time. And that can keep you present. Present. And that is the animating presence. That is the consciousness that you are beyond the mind. That is the consciousness that inhabits the body. And at some point in your so called life, it doesn't inhabit the body anymore, one could say. And when it doesn't inhabit the body anymore, the atoms and molecules of your body very quickly disperse. They say there's nobody anymore. Where are we going now? They go their own way. And then when you look what that looks like, after a few days the body decays. The animal, that which gave life to the body is gone. Nothing is holding the atoms and molecules together anymore. And but so there's a. Even inanimate objects have a flicker of that that holds them together. The evening you have a pebble. I don't have. It's too far. I don't want to go. I have some pebbles on my windowsill. The something is holding the atoms and molecules of that pebble together much longer than the physical body of you. Because that will. They will be. The pebbles are beautiful. They have a beautiful presence. So there it's consciousness at a very, very low frequency, very low frequency. Just a glimmer of that which is in you a million times stronger a glimmer in that. And a pebble can live for thousands of years. But eventually it also will dissolve inner body awareness. Highly recommend that when you think you can't be present, feel it breathe into the body, feel the aliveness. And then you become, you realize the deep eye that transcends the person. Beautiful, beautiful. And as I said, don't underestimate the importance of your state of consciousness. Fires. The so called world is concerned. There is a connection. Thank you.

Thank you Eckhart. And thank you all so much for joining us this evening. As we discussed earlier, you this is such a special time for us to come together and to be in this field together. And Eckhart will be on his US Tour and it's another opportunity to join Eckhart in person. So if you're in Denver or Miami or Austin or LA or Seattle or many other cities in the U.S. please check out eckhart tolle.com we would love to see you all in person. And thank you again for joining us this evening.